Andrew, how about the challenge of budget competency?

How about the challenge of budgetary realism, that being to live more within one's means rather than spending money as if it grows on trees.

what makes me laugh about Labor's approach in this new era of difficulty is that they are spending too much in these times of relative prosperity. At least, the Coalition delivered surpluses and a savings fund to meet future liabilities.

Heaven help Australia's debt situation if China slows or the western world returns to recession once they stop printing money.

I mean just switch on Sky News now and listen to Rudd's ramblings, now 100% portraying the Coalition as heartless people void of concerns about Aust's future. If only it was that simple, hey Andrew

....
The problem for the Liberals is that they have spent the past three years saying ‘no’ to Labor’s sensible savings measures.

Don't need to read any more, WHAT A JOKE !

Sorry Andrew, given labors record with figures over the last six years you have no credibility. Your forcasts were reckless and wildy inaccurate. I don't think anyone could believe your assesment of the oppositions costings. Buy the way, what were " Labor’s sensible savings measures" exactly?

....Buy the way, what were " Labor’s sensible savings measures" exactly?

Yes, I was wondering the same thing!

Chris Lewis
I previously thought you understood something about economics and employment.

Australia's unemployment and underemployment is running at about 13%. That represents infrastructure and services gone for ever. Inflation is not a problem at present and won't be until demand starts to press on supply in a booming economy. The sovereign government can spend, without paying interest, on internal labour and materials until the economy gets close to full employment which in the era prior to the ascent of neo-liberal economic nonsense in the seventies was around 3%. The Federal Government could make funds available to the states for essential infrastructure. The states would owe the money to the federal Government which would, in turn owe, it to the Reserve Bank which it owns on our behalf. The Reserve could own or have a mortgage over the infrastructure.

Australia does suffer due to our current account deficit but that requires an industry policy to ensure that essential industries survive. After WW2 Australia developed a white goods industry and boilermaking and machining was prominent in train building and the structural industry. Now most of that is sourced overseas and Australia loses the taxation that was paid by people employed in those industries.

If the steel industry loses the car industry as a customer we will be capable of producing almost nothing physical. You like many of those commenting on economics need to read the blogs and Professor Wray's primer available at New Economic Perspectives.

foyle,

I also believe in an industry policy.

I am not saying budget deficits are not necessary; I am saying that Labor's habits are void of consideration for the reality that there will be more constraints in future decades than in past decades, at least if recent policy trends remain.

Yes, we need to make room for industry and infrastructure assistance, a reality that does not exclude deficits at time, but please forgive me for declaring that Labor has no real idea about how to go about it beyond rhetoric and ranting.

Not sure if Libs have much idea either, but this mob has had its turn and largely failed

with deficits at the last 6 budgets (after constant promises for surpluses) and a huge national debt it seems amazing that labour supporters are frothing at the mouth regarding costings. When the deficit can go from 18 billion to 30 billion in a matter of weeks supposedly based on treasury figures one can see that labour uses government figures simply to spin more lies. why would the liberals be so stupid to put out costings now. all they need to do is point out the wastage, incompetence and vandalism which is documented fact. labours budget honesty is equivalent to the IPCC honesty on climate. An absolute joke. Its like Lance Armstrong calling for honesty in AFL.

Foyle, to go further, I am no economist. I merely offer my limited opinion on matters that are very complex, probably still beyond my intellect.

I get some things wrong. Bought gold near its highest value and sold at a 25% loss.

But, why is it I could see that Treasury projections were going to badly wrong. Why is it I got my money out of shares before GFC and saved a lot of my money, at least by my more humble levels of wealth.

Answer, I don't really care what conventional or neo-conventional economic theory suggests. I make my mind up on the evidence confronting me, often with little regard to the institutions that supposedly offer most wisdom. In other words, every era has new demands in terms of policy possibilities and limitations.

My judgment on budgetary matters, at least at moment, is that Labor has little credibility beyond spending its way out of trouble. This view may change in the future if I was to read and learn from much better Labor party wisdom.

I am always open to reasoned analysis, but bias that does not recognise reality or even one's own shortcomings should never be tolerated. Again, Labor should have some foresight with its spending and never assume recoveries based on wishful thinking.

We hear this incessant mantra about the surpluses Costello produced in the years before the Global Financial Heist. Here's a fact check that would be useful: How much surplus was delivered by Costello overall? How much, overall, was receipts from flogging off the assets that Australians had funded and created over many decades, sometimes upwards of a century?

Keating also transferred a large amount of taxpayer-funded wealth into private, largely foreign, coffers (it wasn't for nothing that the global beneficiaries called Keating the world's greatest Treasurer), but the story we are being sold and Labor hasn't the wit to challenge is that Abbott's crew produced zillions of dollars in surpluses. How much of that money wasn't a surplus at all but merely a cashing in of the nation’s assets? What assets have the Rudd/Gillard governments flogged off?

Emp Jules
The sale of the assets by Costello helped pay off the last Labor debt. Keatings 100 billion debt. Seems you have a terribly short span of attention.

"The sale of the assets by Costello helped pay off the last Labor debt. Keatings 100 billion debt. Seems you have a terribly short span of attention." (I'm a Julia Nutter}

Actual figures and dates for actual privatisations? Ballpark would do, but not faked.

EmperorJulian, for the record I was appalled with the sale of Testra.

However, the libs reasons for selling off assets wasn't to fund the likes of the boat people fiasco, rather, it was to repay the huge labor debt of the day.

Today, we probably have a similar debt (in real terms) but, we literally have nothing left to sell, and if we do, whats left.

If the illegals situation was to stop immediately, very doubtful, we would still struggle to repay this debt, as you must remember, we are also trying to fund labors unfunded policies they are going to leave behind.

Finally, without a doubt, the most important factor for a strong economy is confidence.

I say this because whether it be small, medium or big business, or even the Joe average on the street, they all have one thing in common, that being that they are always hesitant to spend money if they don't think/know they can replace it.

Confidence is something that was skynhigh with Howard/Costelo and is lower than rock bottom with this mob.

Reinstating confidence starts with business, and flows down the line from there.

Fix this problem and we are on our way back.

The fact that the federal budget has gone so wrong in just three months from its release in May points to the lack of integrity by those who authored it. The deficit for 2013-14 is now projected to be $30 billion or 1.9% of GDP. This is a lift in the forecast deficit of about $12 billion. The original forecast deficit was wrong by a whopping 60%.

The author either has a very short memory , or else is trying to out-spin accomplished spinner Kevin13.

Further to the myth of the Lib surplus, information has come my way which was what I had suspected. It wasn’t good economic management – they sold off the nation’s public assets. Here is a ballpark figure for the proceeds of the sales. It’s from an unsigned leaflet and I have no source to quote. As the corporate sector owns the Liberal Party one can guess that the nation will have received a poor bargain.

1. Airport assets (long term leaseholds followed by trade sales) $7.252 bn
2. Transmission towers (ABC and SBS) $0.65 billion
3. Railway assets $2 bn
4. Australian Industry Development Corporation $0.2 bn
5. Commonwealth Funds Management $0.063 bn
6. Telstra initial float
7. 167 tonnes stored gold $2.4 bn [1]
8. In addition there was sale of 51% of the Commonwealth Bank after Keating had flogged off the rest. Howard’s sale was by float at $10.40 a share. You’d have to be an accountant to figure out what that brought – a very rough guess is half its $8 bn value [2]

This comes to around $16 ½ bn

[1] Sold 167 tonnes gold (worth about $6 bn) returning just $2.4 bn, via a single broker engaged without tender.

[2] http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/JournalArticles01/CBAPrivatisation01.html


I think the Libs must have scooped out most of the national treasure left ungrabbed by Keating though there's still the schools and universities and Medicare and the public hospitals and of course the ABC and SBS.

Any source for the "$100 bn deficit" Keating was supposed to have left?

Australia does suffer due to our current account deficit but that requires an industry policy to ensure that essential industries survive.
Foyle,
Well, you'd better go out & ask all the Labor supporters why they're so hell-bent to not do anything about it. After all they caused this deplorable situation.

EmperorJulian can I ask, your quoted figures on gold, are they at today's prices, or at the prices when they were sold?

Remembering that gold spiked in the early 90's to about $700 an once, then fell to below $200, before rebounding ever since 911.

Furthermore, I don't understand the use of the words 'gold and tonnes' in the same sentence, as gold is weighed differently to all other items.

Where as there are 16 oz in a pound, gold is only 12 oz. So how many ponds of gold make up a tonne?

As for the selling off of our assets, I fully agree that we should never have done so.

What I feel we should have done was used people's super to build infrastructure (assets) rather than allow our greedy investment houses to gamble with people's future, at a healthy profit to the brokers I might add.

Just think, since super started back in the early 90's, there is now trillion of dollars worth of super and we could have been debt free and our refugees could be on a decent pension.

Talk about missed opportunity.

Rehctub:

The calculation is rough because I don’t know when the rort was perpetrated and hence don’t know the value of an ounce at the time. Current price is $US 1500. I took a wild guess at $A1000. As I was in rough approximation territory I used 28g to an avoirdupois ounce as I knew it and would have needed to look up the mass of a troy ounce (turns out it’s 31g against 28g for avoirdupois)

167 tonnes = 167 million grams = 0.167 billion grams
At 28 grams to the ounce that is 0.006 billion ounces = 6 billion dollars
At 31 grams to the ounce that is 0.0054 billion ounces = 5.4 billion dollars

If a nation wants to build it needs advance money.
1. It can borrow it
2. It can print it
3.It can decide not to build

My recipe would be to borrow up to a limit of prudence or print up to a limit of prudence or to do both, or to abandon the project if it is merely to build a stash of armaments for supporting colonial ambitions, especially the colonial ambitions of a very foolishly trusted ally.

I'd rather borrow from the foreign banksters than from superannuation funds because if the money couldn't be repaid I'd rather leave the foreign banksters hanging out to dry (as the Europeans should do) than the Australian superannuants.

Emp jules

Are you yelling ud the Howard goverment was not left 100 billion debt by keating?

I have not had such a good laugh in years.

Now tell me that Costello never left a future fund nor 20 billion in the bsnk. Then tell me he neber ran surpluses nor lowered tax.

Go on make my day.

Also tell me whst happened to real wages under Howard and undrt kevvy/ julia.

Chris Lewis and others.
I have a few other things on and have only now found more time to comment.

What are the main problem with the Australian economy today?

To me they are;
1. Underemployment of people and resources.
The sovereign (money issuing) government faces no monetary problem in paying to utilising both to produce beneficial assets for our society or even to produce items for foreign aid.

2. The deficit in our Current Account.
The solution to that long term problem requires an industry policy. We have lost the whitegoods industry that was seen as a necessary industry in the aftermath of WW2. Are our washing machines and refrigerators any cheaper now they are imported? No and the imports are no better in quality. We need to reinstate industries that manufacture to meet consumer demand. Why are foreign products available here? Because foreign countries want to export their potential unemployment.

3. Overpriced energy
The total cost for electricity per kWh, including capital recovery cost, is, solar power 23.5c, wind 18.4c, coal 5.6c, and gas 4.8c.
If Chinese and Indian research succeeds power will eventually become available from modular, safe, mass produced thorium nuclear plants for under 4c per kWh.

4. Lack of understanding of monetary theory.
Budget outcomes are a result and not an aim. Employ every capable citizen, use the resources that are available, limit dumping in this country of other countries' potential unemployment and the budget outcome will move towards surplus. Apply austerity policies and underemployment will increase, the current account will probably move the wrong way and, the private sector will end up with less financial wealth.

Actually I wasn't stating (let alone "yelling") that Keating had not left behind a $100bn deficit - merely asking for a source. Having elicited nothing but an incoherent jumble from Imajulianutter in response, I searched myself. A few oblique references in Google listings but each article on being downloaded was all tip and no iceberg. But then I found official substantiation[1] - that the $100bn deficit was a Lib-Murdoch beatup. Read it and look closely at the graph of headline and underlying budget balance. What's not a beatup is the way the Libs hid their own profligate deficit financing by selling the family silver in huge chunks.

[1]http://www.budget.gov.au/1996-97/state1/state1.asp
<CTRL> "+" makes it legible.

Lack of understanding of monetary theory.
Foyle,
Theory might just be a close enough description of Labor's handling but criminally incompetent manipulation is probably more apt.

Emp Jules
The sale of the assets by Costello helped pay off the last Labor debt. Keatings 100 billion debt. Seems you have a terribly short span of attention.

As with the usual lefties you say things that are just fibs and then attack people who challenge you.

Are you sure you are not Emperor Kevvy?

Hey Emps mate
Have a read of the Age on 14/8/2013. Particularly read the article by Paul Koukouluas. Not only is he not a Murdoch journo but he was also a senior economic advisor to Labor PM Julia Gillard. Seems he shares my view and actually details the dates of the down paying of Keatings 96 billion debt. Not only that, you'd love him, because he criticises Costello for paying it down AND his method of doing so.

I won't supply the link. You should be interested enough yo correct your own misconceptions and errors. That would stop you making yourself look silly.

I do not know of any Paul Koukouluas and neither does Google. I can’t wind the clock back to August 14 and go to Melbourne and buy an Age. Imajulianutter’s “challenge” to find that nonexistent $100bn debt is another wild goose chase, written in Pidgin, asking a poster to go way beyond the allowed 4 posts, a standard troll stratagem. I provided a link to official data on each year’s total left-over deficit. Look it up. I won’t reply as even this over-the-four post may not make it. Any reader stupid enough to believe the $100bn debt story is welcome.

here is the original source and it was repeated in koukoulas article in the age.

http://www.percapita.org.au/01_cms/details.asp?ID=628

you are looking sillier all the time emps. Obviously you can not usefully use a comp either.

Hey Emps

Has the cat got your tongue or are you choking on your vegimite sandwich?